Community of Women

14

Monday morning came, and Maggie was glad of it.

She got up early enough to drive Dave to the station in the Volkswagen, then headed home again and stood under a cold shower until she felt sufficiently awake to eat breakfast. The weekend had been hellish, but it was over now, and today she and Elly were going into Manhattan to shop for clothes. She had not seen Elly since that Friday afternoon and she was anxious to see her, to talk to her, to be with her.

Friday itself had been more than she had expected. The bare-breasted episode was an unanticipated stroke of luck. She’d initiated it, of course, by stripping down to her bra, but when Elly had tugged her sweater over her head to reveal uncovered breasts, the ball had really gotten rolling. It wasn’t hard to understand why Ell occasionally wandered around without a bra; the little devil had the firmest pair of breasts in captivity. Maggie’s mouth had started watering at the sight of them, and concealing her interest had not been the easiest thing in the world.

But Friday afternoon had paved the way for the horrid weekend. She hadn’t seen Elly, but she’d carried around the memory of Elly’s exciting body, and as a result she’d been too keyed-up and stimulated to settle down. And so she had skipped Saturday night’s round of parties. Instead she went into New York, went down to the Village to a convenient lesbian bar, and found a convenient pick-up.

The girl she picked up was a blonde bit of fluff, a student at Brooklyn College who was not, strictly speaking, a dyed-in-the-wool lesbian. The girl, Marcia Andover by name, was bisexual. She wore her hair in a long pony tail, wore a great deal of eye makeup, talked in self-consciously hip slang, and carried a copy of a book of poems by Alan Ginsberg under one arm. She was, in short, playing with hipsterism; she wanted to sample kicks, wanted to take her pleasure where she found it.

Maggie didn’t like hit-and-run sex. But, at the moment, she had no choice; the afternoon with Elly had her ready to start climbing the walls, and a girl like Marcia could take a little of the tension out of her system. Marcia was ideal for her purposes. Marcia was attractive enough to be worth the trouble to get her into a bed, human enough to spend an evening with, and essentially dull enough so that Maggie would not miss her.

Maggie bought her drinks, talked to her about existentialist poetry, and went home with her to a third-floor walk-up on Barrow Street, a small single room in an old brownstone. There Marcia played progressive jazz records on a too loud hi-fidelity phonograph, danced around nude for awhile, and finally joined Maggie on top of the small bed.

They rubbed their breasts and bellies together, stroked each other, kissed and fondled each other. They were in bed together all night long, waking periodically to have sex, then drifting into a lazy sort of sleep only to awaken again and seek the delights of each other’s bodies. It was a satisfying, fulfilling sort of evening, and when Maggie caught a northbound train in the morning, the tremendous wave of desire which Elly had caused had been temporarily slaked.

Still, as she finished her breakfast coffee this Monday morning, Maggie could not be too pleased with the way she had spent Saturday night. Marcia had been a substitute, and a mediocre one at best. Her breasts had been sweet to kiss, but they were not nearly so appealing as Elly’s. Her body had been good to hold, but not nearly so good as Elly Carr’s would be. Her moans and groans were exciting, certainly, but Maggie would be ten times as excited when it was Elly who was doing the moaning.

And now it was time to see Elly.

She called her first, on the phone. “It’s Mag,” she said. “Ready to go to the big town?”

“Very ready.”

“I’ll pick you up in ten minutes. Or is that too soon?”

“Better make it fifteen.”

“Fine,” Maggie said. “I’ll drive the Volks and leave it at the station. See you in fifteen minutes, honey.”

She put the receiver back on the hook. Then, whistling happily, she began to get dressed. She put on perfume. Just a little, just a dab behind each ear and at the tip of each breast. She did not want to overdo things, but she wanted to be as desirable as she possibly could.

Today would probably not be the day, but you could never tell. It might take quite awhile before she could even bring herself to toss a genuine pass at Elly. Then again, they might wind up in the rack within a day or two. There was no way to tell yet.

She smiled and hurried to the Volkswagen.

Something had happened over the weekend. Roz Barclay was not sure just what it was, or just how it had happened, but she could not deny that, whatever in hell it was, it had in fact occurred.

The weekend was a strangely quiet one for Roz and Linc Barclay. They did not go out to parties; when Linc was in a slump he was distinctly asocial, so they spent the weekend at home. Linc did not even drink. He sat around brooding, alternately reading any of a number of books, staring blankly at the screen of the television set, or lost in some private thoughts all his own.

Then Monday morning came. Linc was awake at nine — early for him. He headed for the bathroom, showered, shaved. He came out, dressed, in a tremendous hurry.

“Bring a thermos of coffee to the study when you get a chance,” he said. “I’ll be in there.”

“You’ll have breakfast first, honey. It won’t take—”

“No, Roz. Not now. I think I’m going to be able to write. I don’t want to pass up a chance. Just bring coffee.”

She had known better than to argue with him. She went to the kitchen to make coffee while he went through the yard to the cottage he used for a study. She filled a thermos with the hot black liquid and took it to him, pausing at the door to listen to the hectic clatter of typewriter keys. It was a welcome sound, a sound she had gone too long without hearing. She listened for a moment, gauging the speed at which he was writing. He was going fast. That was a good sign, a sign that the slump was very probably over. He didn’t have to grope for words. The sentences were flowing freely and easily, flowing from mind to paper with the typewriter an intermediary. She smiled to herself, a happy and grateful smile. Then, knowing better than to interrupt him by knocking, she pushed the door open.

She set the thermos of coffee upon the desk, unscrewed the top, used the top as a cup and filled it with coffee. He had not stopped typing. He came to the edge of a page, looked up only long enough to nod at her, then separated the sheet of carbon paper from the sheets he had just finished. He slapped the carbon paper between a fresh first and second sheet, rolled the paper sandwich into his typewriter, glanced for an instant at the last few words on the recently completed page, and started in again, picking up in the middle of the sentence and rattling away.

She watched him for several seconds. A cigarette was burning in the porcelain ashtray. Another cigarette was jammed in the corner of his mouth. He had not lighted this one yet, but he would get around to it sooner or later.

She left the cottage, walked back to the house. He was over it now, over the slump, through with sitting and moping and drinking too much. Now he would work at breakneck speed, finishing Murder By Moonlight easily within the week, working night and day, plunging into a fresh book or story as soon as the current one was finished. She didn’t expect to see much of him for the next few days. He would be too busy catching up with himself, too busy pouring out all the words and phrases and sentences and paragraphs that had been bottled up for months, too busy grinding out all the pages he had not been able to write before.

But she did not mind. He was a writer and she was a writer’s wife, and the clickety-clack of the IBM electric typewriter was the sweetest music she had ever heard.